DEATH OF GOETHE.

In the Obituary of these days stands one article of quite peculiar import; the time, and place, and particulars of which will have to be often repeated, and re-written, and continue in remembrance for many centuries: this, namely, that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar, on the 22nd of March 1832. It was about eleven in the morning: "he expired," says the record, "without any appa-. rent suffering, having, a few minutes previously, called for paper for the purpose of writing, and expressed his delight at the arrival of spring." A beautiful death: like that of a soldier found faithful at: his post, and in the cold hand his arms still grasped! The Poet's last words are a greeting of the new-awakened Earth; his last move-: ment is to work at his appointed task. Beautiful: what we might. call a Classic sacred-death; if it were not rather an Elijah-translation,-in a chariot, not of fire and terror, but of hope and soft vernal sunbeams! It was at Frankfort on the Mayn, on the 28th of August: 1749, that this man entered the world; and now, gently welcoming the very birthday of his eighty-second spring, he closes his eyes, and takes farewell.

So, then, our Greatest has departed. That melody of life, with its. cunning tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone silent; the heavenly force that dwelt here, victorious over so much, is here no longer: thus far, not farther, by speech and by act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. The End! What solemn meaning lies in that word, as it peals mournfully through the soul, when a living Friend has passed away! All now is closed, irrevocable: the changeful lifepicture, growing daily into new coherence, under new touches and hues, has suddenly become completed and unchangeable; there as it lay, it is dipped, from this moment, in the æther of the Heavens, and shines transfigured, to endure even so-for ever. Time, and Time's empire; stern, wide-devouring, yet not without their grandeur! The week-day man, who was as one of us, has put on the garment of Eternity, and become radiant and triumphant: the Present is all at once the Past; Hope is suddenly cut away, and only the backward vistas of Memory remain, shone on by a light that proceeds not from this earthly sun.

The death of Goethe, even for the many hearts that personally loved him, is not a thing to be lamented over; is to be viewed, in his own spirit, as a thing full of greatness and sacredness. "For all men it is appointed once to die." To this man the full measure of a man's life had been granted, and a course and task such as to only a few in the whole generations of the world: what else could we hope or require but that now he should be called hence, and have leave to depart, "having finished the work that was given him to do?" If his course, as we may say of him more justly than of any other, was like the Sun's, so also was his going down. For, indeed, as the material Sun is the eye and revealer of all things, so is Poetry, so is the World-Poet, in a spiritual sense: Goethe's life, too, if we examine it, is well represented in that emblem of a solar Day. Beautifully rose our summer sun, gorgeous in the red fervid East, scattering the spectres and sickly damps (of both of which there were enough to scatter);strong, benignant in his noon-day clearness, walking triumphant

through the upper realms: and now, mark, also, how he sets! So stirbt ein Held: anbetungsvoll! "So dies a hero: sight to be worshipped!"

And yet, when the inanimate, material Sun has sunk and disappeared, it will happen that we stand to gaze into the still glowing West; and there rise great, pale, motionless clouds, like coulisses or curtains, to close the flame-theatre within; and then, in that deathpause of the Day, an unspeakable feeling will come over us: it is as if the poor sounds of Time, those hammerings of tired Labour on his anvils, those Voices of simple men, had become awful and supernatural; as if in listening, we could hear them "mingle with the ever-pealing tone of old Eternity." In such moments the secrets of Life lie opener to us; mysterious things flit over the soul; Life itself seems holier, wonderful, and fearful. How much more when our sunset was of a living sun; and its bright countenance and shining return to us, not on the morrow, but "no more again, at all, for ever!" In such a scene, silence, as over the mysterious-great, is for him that has some feeling thereof, the fittest mood. Nevertheless by silence, the distant are not brought into communion; the feeling of each is without response from the bosom of his brother. There are now, what some years ago there were not, English hearts that know something of what those three words, "Death of Goethe," mean: to such men, among their many thoughts on the event, which are not to be translated into speech, may these few, through that imperfect medium, prove acceptable.

"Death," says the Philosopher, " is a commingling of Eternity with Time; in the death of a good man, Eternity is seen looking through Time." With such a sublimity here offered to eye and heart, it is not unnatural to look with new earnestness before and behind, and ask, What space in those years and æons of computed Time, this man with his activity may influence; what relation to the world of change and mortality, which the earthly name Life, he who is even now called to the Immortals has borne and may bear.

Goethe, it is commonly said, made a new era in Literature; a Poetic era began with him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet nowise generally visible. This common saying is a true one, and true with a far deeper meaning than, to the most, it conveys. Were the Poet but a sweet sound and singer, solacing the ear of the idle with pleasant songs, and the new Poet one who could sing his idle, pleasant song to a new air, we should account him a small matter, and his performance small. But this man, it is not unknown to many, was a Poet in such a sense as the late generations have witnessed no other; as it is, in this generation, a kind of distinction to believe in the existence of, in the possibility of. The true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose eye has been gifted to discern the godlike mystery of God's universe, and decipher some new lines of its celestial writing: we can still call him a Vates and Seer; for he sees into this greatest of secrets "the open secret; hidden things become clear; how the Future (both resting on Eternity) is but another phasis of the Present; thereby are his words in very truth prophetic, what he has spoken shall be done.

It begins now to be everywhere surmised that the real Force, which in this world all things must obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision, and

Determination. The Thought is parent of the Deed, nay, is living soul of it, and last and continual, as well as first mover of it; is the foundation, and beginning, and essence, therefore, of man's whole existence here below. In this sense, it has been said, the wORD of man (the uttered thought of man) is still a magic formula, whereby he rules the world. Do not the winds and waters, and all tumultuous powers, inanimate and animate, obey him? A poor, quite mechanical, Magician speaks,--and fire-winged ships cross the ocean at his bidding. Or mark, above all, that "raging of the nations," wholly in contention, desperation, and dark chaotic fury; how the meek voice of a Hebrew Martyr and Redeemer stills it into order, and a savage Earth becomes kind and beautiful, and the "habitation of horrid cruelty" a temple of peace. The true sovereign of the world, who moulds the world like soft wax, according to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees into the world; the "inspired Thinker," whom in these days we name Poet. The true sovereign is the Wise Man.

However, as the Moon, which can heave up the Atlantic, sends not in her obedient billows at once, but gradually; and, for example, the Tide, which swells to-day on our shores and washes every creek, rose in the bosom of the great Ocean (astronomers assure us) eight-and-forty hours ago; and indeed all world-movements, by nature deep, are by nature calm, and flow and swell onwards with a certain majestic slowness,-so, too, with the impulse of a Great Man, and the effect he has to manifest on other men. To such a one we may grant some generation or two before the celestial Impulse he impressed on the world will universally proclaim itself, and become (like that working of the Moon), if still not intelligible, yet palpable, to all men; some generation or two more, wherein it has to grow, and expand, and envelope all things, before it can reach its acme; and thereafter mingling with other movements and new impulses, at length cease to require a specific observation or designation. Longer or shorter such period may be, according to the nature of the Impulse itself, and of the elements it works in; according, above all, as the Impulse was intrinsically great and deep-reaching, or only wide-spread, superficial, and transient. Thus, if David Hume is at this hour Pontiff of the World, and rules most hearts, and guides most tongues (the hearts and tongues, even of those that in vain rebel against him), there are, nevertheless, symptoms that his task draws towards completion; and now in the distance his Successor becomes visible. On the other hand, we have seen a Napoleon, like some Gunpowder Force (with which sort he, indeed, was appointed chiefly to work), explode his whole virtue suddenly, and thunder himself out and silent, in a space of five-and-twenty years. While again, for a man of true greatness, working with spiritual implements, two centuries is no uncommon period: nay, on this Earth of ours, there have been men whose Impulse had not completed its developement till after fifteen hundred years; and might, perhaps, be seen still individually subsistent after two thousand.

But, as was once written, "though our clock strikes when there is a change from hour to hour, no hammer in the horologe of time peals through the universe to proclaim that there is a change from era to era." The true beginning is oftenest unnoticed, and unnoticeable. Thus do men go wrong in their reckoning; and grope hither and thither, not knowing where they are, in what course their history

runs. Within this last century, for instance, with its wild doings and destroyings, what hope, grounded on miscalculation, ending in disappointment! How many world-famous victories were gained and lost, dynasties founded and subverted, revolutions accomplished, constitutions sworn to; and ever the "new era" was come, was coming, yet still it came not, but the time continued sick! Alas, all these were but spasmodic convulsions of the death-sick time; the crisis of cure and regeneration to the time was not there indicated. The real new era was when a Wise Man came into the world with clearness of vision, and greatness of soul to accomplish this old high enterprise, amid these new difficulties, yet again: A Life of Wisdom. Such a man became, by Heaven's preappointment, in very deed, the Redeemer of the time. Did he not bear the curse of the time? He was filled full with its scepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions, till his heart was like to break: but he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly by word and act showed others that come after, how to do the like. Honour to him who first," through the impassable, paves a road!" Such indeed is the task of every great man; nay, of every good man in one or the other sphere, since goodness is greatness; and the good man, high or humble, is ever a martyr, and "spiritual hero that ventures forward into the gulf for our deliverance." The gulf into which this man ventured, which he tamed and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly all others lie included: The whole distracted Existence of Man is an age of Unbelief. Whoso lives, whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely in that mad element, may yet know, perhaps too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the Chosen of our time, who could prevail in that same, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as can belong to no other.

How far he prevailed in it, by what means, with what endurances and achievements, will in due season be estimated: the data are now all ready; those Volumes called Goethe's Works will receive no farther addition or alteration; and the record of his whole spiritual Endeavour lies written there,-were the man or men but ready who could read it rightly! A glorious record; wherein he that would understand himself and his environment, and struggles for escape out of darkness into light, as for the one thing needful, will long thankfully study. For the whole chaotic time, what it has suffered, attained, and striven after, stands imaged there; interpreted, ennobled into poetic clearness. From the passionate longings and wailings of "Werter," spoken as from the heart of all Europe; onwards through the wild unearthly melody of "Faust" (like the spirit-song of falling worlds); to that serenely smiling wisdom of "Meisters Lehrjahre," and the German Hafiz,-what an interval; and all enfolded in an ethereal music, as from unknown spheres, harmoniously uniting all! A long interval; and wide as well as long for this was a universal man. History, Science, Art, human Activity under every aspect; the laws of light, in his "Farbenlehre;" the laws of wild Italian life in his "Benvenuto Cellini;" nothing escaped him, nothing that he did not look into, that he did not see into. Consider too the genuineness of whatsoever he did; his hearty, idiomatic way; simplicity with loftiness, and nobleness, and aerial grace. Pure works of art, completed with an antique Grecian polish, as "Torquato Tasso," as "Iphigenie;" Proverbs; "Xenien;" Patriarchal Sayings, which, since